"
'Siris - !"
She'd almost dropped that pretty missive, when she'd began to realise its meaning; damned near did when she reached the name at the end.
Actually answering it, though, was an entirely different caliber of challenge.
Condense the details of several particularly turbulent years into the span of three sentences. Oh, into three
paragraphs, if you must - but no more than that, for we are constrained here by the limits of page-size and
time; this is, after all, a matter of some urgency. Describe Myrken's state of constant flux, heightened as it is in recent years; detail Ashfiends and cultists and Dreamwakers, but spare only a few words for each of them, for there's only so much room upon the page. No. This is an impossible task, by any reasonable standard. A former Governor might manage it, or a certain scribe - but neither of them is present and neither of them can be made to be; the only person to whom she would entrust the whole origins of this letter and of her sentiments besides is miles from here, and his return is far from imminent.
So in the end, it can only be Farsiris - a woman frighteningly competent and generally overworked. 'Siris - accountant and customs-manager and general household
wrangler; onetime
Secretary General besides, and entirely familiar with the business of translating a swordswoman's intentions into legible words....
Lenore,
The years have been too many; the occasions too few. There is nothing whatever to be excused, nothing to forgive: we have had word intermittently of Thessilane pursuits, and I can scarcely imagine what shape your days must have taken throughout these last years. I suspect, though, that we are alike in lacking the time and opportunity required for journeys, even those involving destinations of which we are very fond.
- and already it seems so clinical, so cold; so ill-suited for receipt by a woman like
Lenore. Duke's wife she might be; Thessilane
Duchess, she very much is. But long years ago she was a delicate shape upon worn, dusty steps, soft-eyed and silent; in those days she was the most gentleness a northern mercenary had ever seen.
"No - no, we'll not start it over again. Just - here, perhaps if I - "
But you haf been missed, and beyond anything I hope that these haf been kind years for you and yours. By your letter I fear they haf not been, and this I truly regret.
I will seek your cargo at its destunation. But I recie receive it with this caution: there may be better homes for a thing truly preshucious
" - no; no, enough of that. My mistake. Perhaps it's better you see to that boy, mn? Something hot, something to recover him from that ride - "
Should it become necissary my home can and will shelter your cargo from pursuit. Understand, Myrken does not share the Crown's sentuments towards Burel. Certain of the Crown's repreesentatives are nonetheless stationed here, for what duration I do not know. Myrken itself is, off course, as difficult as you haf known it to be in the past. But this home is our sister's work, and its walls do not know how to be weak.
Such measures may not be necissary. You know off course that I hope that they will not be, and that even so I prepare in case of the worst.
What can be done will be done. In memory, and in gratitude alike.
- Ariane
A pause, when she has signed her name to it at last. A silence, long and considering.
And with tightened lips and a hand grown tense, she scrawls an urgent addition:
I hope that danger is not iminent, to you or to he.
That you will both remain very, very safe.
and it is all, absolutely everything, that she can manage to do.
They keep that courier for some hours: time enough for rest, following a ride which could only have been exhausting; time enough for nourishment as well. When he departs through Darkenhold's tall gates, he rides beneath the pallid light of a morning's early hours and upon a horse that is not his own; with a new jacket for his shoulders and a scarf against the autumn chill, and -
"Carefully," they'd bade him at the gate. "Carefully, now."
And showed him those roads which were certain to be safe.